Visit hardship areas to appreciate our situation, police officer urges vetting panel

Constable Charles Wainaina of Ng'arua traffic base appears before the National Police Service Commission vetting panel in Nakuru on August 29, 2016.PHOTO | SULEIMAN MBATIAH | NATION MEDIA GROUP

A police constable has urged the National Police Service Commission (NPSC) to visit hardship areas in order to appreciate what officers on go through.

Bureti-based traffic officer Bernard Kiprop spoke when he appeared before the vetting panel at Kunste Hotel in Nakuru on Monday.

He asked the NPSC chair Johnston Kavuludi and the commissioners to create some time and visit areas such as Baringo where officers face harsh conditions while on duty.

Constable Kiprop — who has been in the service for 13 years, 12 of which he served as a General service Unit (GSU) officer and currently a traffic officer — said despite the conditions, most of the time they end up with no allowances.

He also blamed the public for aiding corruption in the police service.

AVOID COURT

He noted that on his duty as a traffic officer he has encountered a number of cases where a person commits an offence and tries to offer him a token to avoid being taken to court.

“Most people fear being taken to court and it is in such cases that they offer tokens to traffic officers so as to be spared,” he said.

Ng’arua based traffic officer Charles Maina Mureithi, who also appeared before the panel, was asked to explain what led to his three years in prison.

Constable Mureithi told the panel that he was involved in a shoot-out between police officers and robbers at Embakasi in Nairobi in 2000.

“During the incident, a woman who was not part of the two groups was shot,” he said.

He told the panel that he was arrested a week after the incident and taken to court where he faced murder charges which led to his stay behind the bars for three years.

“I was put in remand as two firearms were used in the incident and there was no proof that the weapons used were mine or the robbers’,” he said.

He said he was later acquitted as he was innocent.